Like Fire and Like Light
by Seta Suzume
Summary: Under the right hands, healing could be quite a sensual experience. Raine/Sheena


Like Fire and Like Light

a Tos fic, by Suzume

for spring_kink on lj

"Sheena! Look out!" Lloyd's words came too late. Sheena tried to dodge the attack. She was certainly swift enough to manage a near-miss, but her clumsiness got the best of her and she stumbled, taking the blow straight to the stomach. The air was knocked out of her as she was thrown hard against the side of the mossy cliff.

"Ugh!" she shuddered with pain and slumped over in the dirt. " C'mon, Sheena," she gritted her teeth and tried to fight through the pain, shakily rising onto her hands and knees. An extra kirima fell out of the outer layer of her top and rolled through the dust. She strained to sit back and steady herself, but the weakness of her body overtook her willpower and she collapsed in a heap, tasting the gritty bitterness of sand in her mouth.

Raine had missed seeing the actual impact of the blow, but the sound of Sheena striking the solidly packed hill caused her to whirl around. Her duty as a healer forced her to look even when she feared the extent of the damage she might see. Sheena struggled feebly, her stomach on the ground. Raine felt a surge of relief that she was still conscious and had avoided being flung over the edge of any of Latheon Gorge's many steep precipices.

She looked back and forth from Lloyd and Colette on the front lines to Sheena's trembling body, trying to keep her swirling emotions from causing her to forget her duty to her young friends and rush blindly to Sheena's side. She was an adult after all. She'd been through plenty of things in her life both before and on this journey. She had to stay composed and hold the line. That would keep the enemies away from Sheena and she could tend to her afterward.

"Raine!" Colette called. She flung her arms wide and sliced bits of leaf from a purple poison lily with her chakrams. "Go help Sheena! I've got your back!"

"Oh," she smiled. Leave it to a bright little ray of sunshine like Colette to see to it that a friend's status was prioritized over a quick victory. "Thank you!" She closed the space between the main path and Sheena swiftly without the need to closely watch her back. She could hear the slam and squeak in her sensitive ears as Colette covered her withdrawal with a rain of little red piko hammers.

"Raine," Sheena whispered, a measure of relief and happiness filtering into her scratched and bruised face.

The half-elf knelt beside Sheena and motioned her to be still as she assessed her injuries. She didn't see any visibly broken bones, which was a good sign, but that didn't mean Sheena's ribs hadn't bruised or fractured. A thin stream of blood trickled from where she had bitten her lip. As painful as her wounds might be, none of them were life threatening. "Alright, I think I understand the situation. Just relax and let me take care of you."

She adjusted her grip on her tall, weighted staff, letting the texture of the well-worn wood soothe her nerves. At that moment she felt she could appreciate the feelings of the ancients who had carved the woods of their prayers onto pieces of wood they would carry to worry between their fingers in moments of stress. ...This was the exact lesson she had taught Genis around the time of their arrival in Iselia. Could you keep your cool even when your friends fell about you?

Once the healing power began to well up within her, coursing like blood from her heart through her veins out to the farthest tips of her steady hands, it rushed as mightily as a raging flood. There was no better lubricant for the desire to heal than feelings of love toward the one you were healing.

Out of the corner of her eye, Raine caught the movements of Lloyd and Colette as they cleared up the last dregs of endemic opposition. Sheena turned over onto her side as Raine mouthed whatever words, arcane or mundane, she used to unleash the potential magic into actual, almost-physical being. Surrounded by the silvery sparkles of spellcraft, Sheena's squinting gave Raine a sort of heavenly halo. As the unearthly power congregated over her, burning and brightening like fire and like light, she used her slowly renewing strength to creep her fingers along the ground to reach Raine's free hand.

The unexpected contact rattled Raine, but now that the well of magic had been tapped, it would not be jolted closed so easily. She curled her own fingers around Sheena's.

Sheena tensed again as the magic seeped through her skin, moving past her outer injuries, mending the superficial scraps and cuts, into the depths of her damaged body. She felt a strange sensation crawling up her spine and her breath caught in her throat. How was it that being healed could be painful? It wasn't like she was fully aware of the sensation of skin and muscle and bone knitting back together. Then, as the pain receded, one wave, and then another, of accelerating pleasure pulsed through her body and she gasped for an entirely different reason than before.

Raine might've flushed a bit looking down on her oddly blissful face- perhaps she recognized this expression from another context- or it might have only been Sheena's willful imagination. The magic faded and her mind cleared. She was glad that only Raine had seen her reaction. With Zelos she would've never heard the end of it.

Raine rose stiffly to her feet, gently assisting Sheena up along with her, never letting go of her hand. Magic couldn't erase the dirt or bruises, but she was smiling again, and even blushing a little, so the remnants of her accident didn't count for much.

"Raine," Sheena sighed, "Thank you."

"You're welcome. It is both my duty and my pleasure."

Raine's hand was so warm.

It wasn't as if Sheena hadn't been healed many times before and by other members of their party, but that wasn't the same. The closer they grew, the stronger the side effects grew. Only Raine could make her feel this way.

"C'mon you two," Lloyd waved them over to the tree stump he was using as a makeshift table. "If you've worked up half as much of an appetite as me, you've gotta be starving for some sandwiches!"

"Shall we?" They went for lunch, hand in hand.


End file.
